My gosh, I have search high and low and I can find maybe one page from early 2009 on ebook page formatting. So frustrating. Frustrating because I do not know what I am doing!

Please, what are the best or most common page dimensions for ebooks in early 2011?

I am currently in PDF form and had been using 5.5" x 7" (8.5" x 11" w/1.5" mar L&R and 2" mar T&B. This does not look so good.

Been using latest: Open Writer > PDF Tools 4 > PDF Viewer.
These are children's books my father wrote. We immagine some will read on a ebook reader hand held and many or most will print.

Please help. I have been creating the website, setting up pay options, formatting documents, editing art work, fighting with .css, etc. and I am burned out! This is for my 84 year old father.

Peace and Blessings
Rylos

If it really must be a PDF, then the most common ebook readers at the moment have a 6" diagonal, with 3:4 aspect ratio, which works out at 3.6" by 4.8"

So that should be your page size. Do not add large margins - 0.1" is plenty for the text, and there's a good argument for having none for pictures - let your pictures go right to the edge. (The screen of the ebook reader doens't go right to the edge of the device - that gives plenty of 'margin'.)

Please, what are the best or most common page dimensions for ebooks in early 2011?

There is no definitive answer unfortunately. Even though majority of e-readers use 6" screens, the presence of various extra elements (status bars, menu bars, etc) makes dimensions of area actually used for displaying PDF unique for each device. So the pages in your file will be zoomed in/out according to those physical dimensions which, combined with specific fonts you use, may result in drastic differences in image quality, sharpness of the text, etc. See this message which provides text area dimensions for different e-readers:

Knowing that PDF is not a suitable eBook format, for some reasons I'm still trying to adopt it as my main format. So, my question is, what's the suitable page size for displaying on a 7" devices like the Galaxy Tab or NookCOLOR...?

But these are preliminary numbers, need to get my hands on a real device to determine the optimal numbers.

Edit 2: To maximize the screen usage, it seems a better idea to put the blank space/margins outside the normally viewable area, and only show them when needed (e.g. making annotations), so the paper size could be 120 x 180mm with 15mm margins. With ezPDF on Android you can use the "Fitting to Text Column" feature to maximize the viewing area.

Edit 3: And one may want to increase the margins for technical books which making annotations are more likely. Although a 7" screen is probably not optimal for reading such anyway. A 10" screen seems more suitable...

Preparing the files for a 7" screen using Word, the page size could be 120 x 180 with 15mm margins, 12pt font size, 1.15 spacing. It's also possible to specify a background colour but normally Word doesn't print it, have to go into Options and change the settings.

PDFs can be zoomed to fit the width. So don't worry about sizes. Just make sure all the pages and side margins are congruent. Here's why: On my iPod touch I've been using GoodReader for about two years now. It has this very useful horizontal lock feature that once you reach the zoom level you want, you tap that button and you can only scroll vertically. I'm reading PDFs by holding it sideways (bottom button): http://k.min.us/ic9dcE.png

And it's incredibly annoying when an author doesn't use the same margin width for each page because I have to mess around with the zoom, go back and forth... Anyway. Congruency.

Word 2010 with Adobe Acrobat X, though not perfect, is probably the pinnacle of PDF creation. But no matter the software you choose, always keep the original .odt, .doc, .docx or .rtf, just in case. You never know when you're gonna need them or what format will come out 5 years from now. And it will make converting them so much more easier.

Page size still matters, even after you zoom to width since the larger page can still result in long lines and tiny text on small screen devices. The fix is either to define a reasonable page size or to use very large sized text. Either solution will work but just depending on zoom to width is not enough.

I agree. If you make a PDF, use a page size fitted exactly for your target size.

That's what I do when making PDFs for my ereader, I make the page size the same as my ereader's text space. This makes formatting ebooks easy since the appear on my computer screen the same way they will appear on my ereader's screen, and it allows me to identify and correct any formatting problems before I generate the PDF.

Page size still matters, even after you zoom to width since the larger page can still result in long lines and tiny text on small screen devices. ...

Size DOES NOT matter to the ereader. The only time page size matters is when the person creating the PDF has to decide what size the text should be.

If you use the conventional "letter" page size you must use a distinctly larger point size for the type than you would normally use for a PDF intended for printout. If you use a page size roughly matching the size of a typical ereader screen then you can use the point sizes you are used to using for the text.

Regardless of page size, you should:
1. chose an page aspect ration near 3:4
2. omit any margins or use a very, very small one
3. choose a point size so that no more than 45 characters, preferably only 35-40, in a single line of text,

No margins ? That's... um... No, you have to have margins. Else it feels like you're reading a .txt file.

Page dimension doesn't matter, unless the height is a little much. That would probably force the reader to split the page and the next page will only have a few lines on it... So you'll have one full page, one 1/6 page, one full page, etc.

My gosh, I have search high and low and I can find maybe one page from early 2009 on ebook page formatting. So frustrating. Frustrating because I do not know what I am doing!

Please, what are the best or most common page dimensions for ebooks in early 2011?

I am currently in PDF form and had been using 5.5" x 7" (8.5" x 11" w/1.5" mar L&R and 2" mar T&B. This does not look so good.

Been using latest: Open Writer > PDF Tools 4 > PDF Viewer.
These are children's books my father wrote. We immagine some will read on a ebook reader hand held and many or most will print.

Please help. I have been creating the website, setting up pay options, formatting documents, editing art work, fighting with .css, etc. and I am burned out! This is for my 84 year old father.

Peace and Blessings
Rylos

Hi Rylos,
Did you fix your formatting issues? I hope so and would love to see your finished product!

I am currently facing a similar problem where I have a kids picture book ready to go - all text can be embedded in the pictures - but regardless of that what is the best dimension to produce each picture/page in so that it fits well on the majority of devices?